Survival of the Fittest
by Akumatt
Summary: Tai and the other digi-destined struggle for survival in the cruel digital world ruled over by a shadowy figure. The shadow of his influence is cast over the entire Digimon universe - will it become his empire? Read if you love Digimon.
1. Chapter 1

Shadows shrouded its figure, masking its face. Gloved claws residing on arm rests and a cape were the only things lit by the dull light of a throne. The golden throne glittered menacingly, illuminating the long, empty hallway, one that was devoid of all life except for a single being.

Steps could be heard echoing.

Ogremon walked out of an adjacent corridor and into the throne room. He padded across the red velvet carpet with gold lining and paused before the steps leading up to the throne. Ogremon bowed until his horns nearly scraped the carpet.

Silence.

Then, "Have they arrived?" A voice smoother than silk oozed out of the smooth-lipped mouth, and was loaded with charisma and confidence.

Ogremon bowed even lower. "Sir. The digi-destined are currently searching the island. They have not met their little Digimon partners yet. Maybe soon though."

The voice didn't change - it still soothed the ears, but had developed a slightly harsher tone. "Hmm...? I was not speaking of that insignificant threat. I had been hoping to discuss the croissants that were supposed to be served to me. Have they arrived yet?"

Ogremon's face twisted into a puzzled expression. "Wait what?"

The voice said nothing at first. The silence lasted for exactly ten seconds. An exasperated exhale could be heard, then it repeated, "I said, are they prepared and ready for me to eat?"

Ogremon did not notice the Digimon on the throne attempting to reign in his anger. "Those things taste like shit anyway."

The strongest Digimon, ruler of the digital world and conqueror of all continents, subjugator of even the most powerful Mega Digimon - **_Myotismon_** \- stood to his full height.

The darkness exploded, radiating out and extending to fill the entire base. The overwhelming pressure slammed Ogremon down and held him there.

Ogremon gasped for breath, then spat blood. The energy Myotismon gave out had crushed his lungs, causing internal damage.

Myotismon put on a mask of happiness, a curve shaping on his face. Then he made a slashing motion.

The air whistled.

Moments later Ogremon's head separated from his body and fell to the floor.

Aside from standing, Myotismon had not moved.

Falling back to his chair and sighing, Myotismon called out, "Devimon! I require your services."

Moments passed. A clock seemed to tick.

Then horns emerged out of the wall besides Myotismon. Sliding out of the smooth cement stone, inch by inch, a black body with a red insignia on its chest appeared before Devimon fully popped out, stretching his wings to their full length. They filled the room and cast it in shadow.

Devimon bowed.

"How may I serve you lord?"

Myotismon answered in an almost caressing fashion, "Play with the 'threat'."

"Whom shall I send?"

"The weakest Digimon we have." Myotismon unleashed what was a light breeze to him, but a hurricane from Devimon, to speed his subordinate along. Devimon was prideful but fled in spite of himself.

Myotismon's eyes gleamed. His glowing orbs whispered of the dead and evil and spirits and blood and killing. They whispered of a love for absolute chaos. They whispered of a nation that would come to be ruled by Myotismon.

Hanumon struck Palmon and blocked Biyomon's aerial dive, before dodging an electric shocker from Tentomon through a swift hop. The monkey Digimon barely landed on the ground before it snatched Biyomon out of the air and threw it into the lunging Gabumon, sending them both hurtling through the air.

They crashed into a cliff yards away.

A fiery red glow emanated from Agumon's stomach, gathering energy, then releasing through a pepper breath.

Hanumon turned while grabbing the gigantic, plain white bone off its back, spun it multiple times, then batted away the ball of flame, which sputtered harmlessly away. Terriermon, Agumon, Tentomon, Gomamon, and Palmon charged forward in unison. Hanumon jumped, soaring high up into the light blue sky.

Tai squinted, eyes straining to avoid being blinded by the piercing light of the sun, then saw where it was going to land. "Everyone get the fuck out!"

Matt manhandled the others away, and they all dove for cover under the rocks and bushes.

Hanumon landed, hard, on Gomamon and Palmon.

Both Digimon let out shrieks, voicing the gut-wrenching pain.

Hanumon roared, shaking its mustard yellow fur, which had red-tinged tips. Two armbands encircled its biceps, and its overdeveloped forearms dwarfed the rest of its blue-skinned body. In its paws squirmed Tentomon, whom moments before, had been flying around attempting to wound the superior Digimon. Izzy widened his eyes. _Somehow, during the fall, that monkey-type Digimon of this supposedly digital world had executed a maneuver in which it acquired my own Digimon. This device I'm holding - let's see... I guess I'll call it a digivice - has been beeping for the last couple of minutes; perhaps that pertains to the overwhelming strength of this Digimon compared to our own. Based on this assumption I can allow my paradigm to shift - there are power levels, and this Digimon attacking us is either one level above or multiple_. "Guys, I think- "

Tai tackled Izzy, and the bone streaked past, skidding across the muddy ground, leaving a furrow in the earth that was five feet deep. "If you just flap your gums together you're gonna die man!" Tai exclaimed.

"You don't understand you bonehead, we have absolutely no chance of winning. We need to recoup our losses and retreat," Izzy returned with a hint of arrogance.

"And look even stupider than boneheads? There's twelve of us and one of it, we got this."

"Tai, you were our de facto leader, but let me just state that this is a ridiculously bad idea."

A cry of pain brought them back to their senses. Sora was in the monkey's grip, hitting its fist with her own over and over again. Tears were streaming down her face, decorating it with moisture.

Hanumon raised her to his jaws.

"Poison Ivy!"

Palmon's fingers extended and whipped around the monkey Digimon's snout, closing it shut. Hanumon reared its head back. Palmon's feet left the ground. She careened towards Hanumon before being head butted into the ground, where she lay without moving.

 _Is this really how this is going to be?_

Tai started yelling at Matt, insulting the weakness of his Digimon. Matt responded in kind while just barely dodging a strike from Hanumon. Their desperation shone through the sweat on their faces and the erratic motions of their bodies, revealing their inner fear: that Sora and, after that, themselves, were about to die.

Hanumon roared, his shaggy head shaking back and forth. Sora squirmed.

 _I'm not going to meet someone I love, get married, travel the world, do anything!?_

Hanumon brought her up to his mouth.

 _I'm just going to die?_

His teeth closed, sinking into Sora. Crimson tears burst out, spurting everywhere. Hanumon began to chew, his razor sharp incisors slashing and snicking away at her flesh.

Matt stopped arguing immediately - he was speechless. He could only stumble back and watch with horror. Mimi gasped and tripped, falling backwards.

Hanumon finished chewing, then swallowed Sora whole.

Tai's face contorted into a mosaic of anger. His fists clenched so hard he bled.

The instant Hanumon stopped chewing he froze.

The air grew heavy. Matt couldn't move, even his legs barely twitched when he tried to back away with them. It felt like he was trying to run across the ocean's floor.

Clouds gathered, creating an inky black block of air that suffocated Tai. He fell to the ground, his anger stopped momentarily by the abrupt darkness.

Pockets of energy sparked into existence, taking the form of lightning bolts. They hit the ground around Hanumon without touching him. Amidst the yellow lightning, Hanumon's muscular body rippled, his fur moving like miniature waves. Hanumon's eyes lit up just as the ground beneath it deepened, collapsing in on itself into a huge crater around ten yards wide. The rate of lightning picked up, striking again and again.

Izzy pointed, his mouth open in an unusual display of puzzlement and awe. Everyone looked to see a palm tree disappear. Tai blinked. _What_? He thought to himself. _I could've sworn there was a plant there. What's going on!?_

Izzy shouted, "Look at the cliff!"

Matt turned just in time to see the rocky precipice dissolve into bits and pieces of code. The numbers of 0's and 1's drifted in the air meaninglessly for a moment.

Then Hanumon roared, and they flew over to the monkey Digimon, swirling in the air around him.

Another tree disappeared.

More code.

The very topsoil of the ground crumbled into powder and formed code, all of it filling the area surrounding Hanumon. It circulated faster, transforming into a spinning vortex of sand and digital code that blew back the digi-destined.

The code spun even faster, yet began to shrink and envelop Hanumon's arms and legs. It coalesced into a hardened skin, then grew stronger and stronger, lengthening the Digimon's arms into a blade capable of cutting a thread. Hanumon's legs were hidden by the billowing code. Then it attached, warping the legs beyond recognition into a light reddish pink.

Code became claws.

Code changed and became different-colored skin and fur.

Izzy could not believe his eyes. "By all rights this Digimon is a different being entity entirely. It is completely disparate from before and yet...it's almost like it...evolved..."

"Don't be ridiculous, evolving takes years! Even I know that!" Tai yelled incredulously.

"As a famous and wise man once said," Izzy explained, "When everything else is ruled out, the only possibility, however odd it seems, must be the truth."

He paused, breath taken by the development that would shock the believers of Darwin's principle. "The Digimon has evolved!"

Izzy opened his mouth to say more, but the evolved Digimon gave him no time. It stamped its foot, and the earth shook. The reverbations continued for a full thirty seconds after.

 _That was a magnitude 4.3 earthquake_! Izzy's eyes widened. "Everyone we need- "

Go was the last thing Izzy remembered before being knocked unconscious by a head butt from the unknown Digimon.

Joe's digivice beeped and emitted in a robotic voice:

"Kyukimon."

Joe and Gomamon were both buffeted into dream land by a casual air slash of the Digimon.

The digivice continued only moments after their bodies hit the ground with,

"Ultimate level."


	2. Chapter 2

"Ultimate level?! Tai we must abscond from this location or we will perish!" Izzy frantically shouted at the top of his lungs, his cold mask torn away. "That must be the top tier of power, and even if it isn't, we still are not a match for its overwhelming power."

Tai opened his mouth to reply.

Kyukimon, twenty feet away from Tai, flicked the blade on its arm in his direction.

Tai disappeared in a flash.

Izzy had very little ideas and was strained by this situation - the leader of their group was gone, perhaps killed, none of their Digimon even reached the attacking one's knee, and his computer had completely short circuited.

There was no hope.

Kyukimon's weasel-like snout was marked with a star-shaped scar, with a long, bright blue mane of hair that fell to the ground. Blades sharp enough to cut a building into pieces had replaced its arms, and they gleamed with splotches of blood.

It crouched on its hind legs for a second, as if listening. Even at half its height, it still loomed over the digi-destined, casting a shadow over all of whom lay unconscious on the ground.

Izzy saw it sniff the air. _Why is it not taking their lives? Free food lies at its feet. This turns all my studies of biology on their head._

Kyukimon's head snapped to face his position.

Izzy bolted in a random direction as fast as his legs could carry him. _The reason is because it takes a perverse pleasure in the hunt!_ His feet pounded the ground. _I do not wish to abandon my companions, but this is the only approach I can take in regards to the current conditions - if I die, we are left without a strategist._

The leaf-strewn ground morphed into open ground, before Izzy finally came to beach sand. Catching his breath, Izzy stood in the middle of a wide expanse of seashore, chest heaving.

A crash filled his ears.

Izzy turned, instantly on guard against any threat.

A dust cloud had been disturbed at the base of a cliff. _My guess is, this...Kyukimon...could not control its sudden evolutionary increase in speed,_ Izzy thought, _I need to analyze any possible courses of action that could ensure my survival-_

The dust had been beginning to settle when Kyukimon burst out, feet clattering and reaching for purchase on the slick, slippery stone-covered section in between the hill and the beach. Every step it took tore up the rocks in the ground, flinging them miles away at a speed of seventy miles per hour.

Muscles straining, it gave up on trying to gallop, skittered to a halt, and leapt one hundred feet in the air instead.

 _Remarkable intelligence_!

Kyukimon hurtled past Izzy and dived into the ocean, splashing everything in a thirty feet radius. Izzy was doused with a wave of water. I cannot deal with this - even my intelligence is obviously no match for it. Izzy ran past an out of place telephone pole, contemplating upon it in his mind, Well that is odd indeed, before dashing back to where he came.

The ocean parted for Kyukimon, who sprang again, landing in front of Izzy, who came to a halt.

IIIIIIII

Tai woke up. He attempted to get to his feet, but the scalding pain in his upper back and head convinced him otherwise, causing him to collapse.

Resigned to his fate, Tai settled for looking around.

To his left was a person he'd never seen before.

To his right was some shrubbery and- _Hold up_.

Tai looked to his left again. Next to him lay a curled up teenage boy around his age, with his thumb in his mouth, snoring his head off.

"Hey, kid!" Tai bellowed, shaking the stranger. "My friends need all the help they can get, so wake up!"

The other child grunted angrily, then simply turned over in his sleep.

Tai repeated the process.

The unknown kid drowsily said, "Go away I'm not ready," before falling back to sleep again.

Annoyed, Tai unleashed his trump card. "If you get up I'll give you chocolate dude."

The boy sat up, combing his hair casually. He introduced himself, "The name is Takuya." A pause. "And I can see you don't have any chocolate. This is perfect."

Tai grabbed Takuya by the shoulders. "Okay, I might have lied about the chocolate. But! I can get ya my goggles if you help me."

Takuya took Tai's goggles off his head. "Deal."

IIIIIIIIII

Kyukimon raised its arm back in preparation to strike Izzy down. The force of the swing pushed the ocean back in one fell swoop.

A voice gained the threatening Digimon's attention. "I'm much more juicy."

Kyukimon tilted its head in almost a questioning manner. It did not understand why the boy looking at it from the top of an overlooking cliff would willingly attract its eyes.

Takuya walked and walked. His hands dug into his pockets, searching momentarily, then, upon finding the object of his search, pulling it out. An elongated version of Tai's digivice was in Takuya's palm. Tai widened his eyes. Why is it different?

Takuya stopped when he reached the edge of the cliff.

The parts of the cliff began to dissolve into bits and pieces of code the instant Takuya placed his fist on his digivice. Veins popped in his face and he made a swiping motion on the top of his digivice as he yelled, "Execute! Spirit Evolution!"

The numbers of 0's and 1's flared, kicking up dust, and it swirled in the air around him. The very topsoil of the ground crumbled into powder and formed code, all of it filling the area surrounding Takuya. It circulated faster, transforming into a spinning vortex of sand and digital code that shielded the unknown, clearly dangerous boy from Tai's eyes.

The code spun even faster, yet began to shrink and envelop Takuya's arms and legs. It coalesced into a hardened skin, then grew stronger and stronger, lengthening his arms into bulky packages of muscle. Takuya's legs, initially hidden by the billowing code, attached, warping the legs into those of a track runner.

Takuya brushed away the code with a single sweep of his arm, casting it away and revealing himself. He was covered in thick, maroon red armor. Takuya had changed from a brunette human to a blonde, and hair hung out of his helmeted skull. Holes a couple inches in diameter were in groups of three on each hand. Smoke trailed from the gaps.

Tai's mouth dropped open. "You...are a Digimon?!"

Takuya answered with a smile and, "Yes," before jumping off the cliff.

He cut through the air and crash-landed, both arms swinging down. The holes on his hands released gas before igniting flames into existence. Takuya slammed into the ground, the impact leaving a crater. A wall of fire shimmered around him.

Even Izzy was awestruck. _I have not seen a sight more interesting than when I discovered the full capacity of my computer hard-drive_...! "Who are you?" He asked.

The fire cleared, exhibiting him in all of his glory.

"Agunimon."

 ** _Please don't be mad that I re-used the transformation sequence from chapter 1. I did that because of nostalgia. You know how the old Digimon series always recycled the Digi-evolutions? Well that's what I tried to do, and that's what I plan to do in future chapters. However, if you want it to be original every single time (not really sure I can do that but I can try) please tell me in a review, because otherwise I won't know._**

 ** _Thank you to everyone who has read this fanfic so far!_**


End file.
